I understand the Party reluctance, but the simple fact of life is that they are the most powerful influence in politics. I’m a gol darned insurrectionist, I burrow in and act all responsible as I try to co-opt the system. Classic guerilla tactics, revolutionaries, subversives, all my kind of people – in American politics and culture.
I know, I mess about in things like an even break for everybody in society, the idea that the Bill of Rights isn’t some optional theory, the idea that I want my nation respected before feared. (no, I really don’t mind the idea that there is an iron fist inside the kid glove) I insist that labor has value and deserves respect and real compensation. I want our people actually educated, not filled with superstitions and propagandistic crap. I want religion respected and kept out of the public square.

Would it please me to find out that Cyahoga Co Democratic Party (DNC) had its head out of its ass because Jill Zimon was in there pitching, sure it would. But that kind of fight takes a lot and not many are cut out for it. But…without the Jills of the world it stays the way it is.

Why is it that 0.5% of the registered voters participate in Party politics? At least partly because they don’t realize that it is the backdoor, the regular folk’s access to the politicians. Sure, I use the servant’s entrance – so what? I’m in the house which is where I want to be.

Take care of your illness. Take care of your head. Don’t worry about the loons, they’re sound and fury signifying nothing.

Your official activist armband with the clenched fist (printed with the union *bug*, of course) is in the mail…..

Sigh – oh, okay. I’m activist. Now watch, there will be no more WLST tomorrow because the sky fell down.

See?

My reaction? (inward, not outward, as I nodded & smiled) “huh? whaaa? ME? uh-uh. Don’t pigeonhole me, don’t label me, PLEASE.” I learned to live with it.

Chuck is right, Jill. If you fight for what you believe, whether by words, deeds or financial contributions, you’re an activist. It’s not the worst label you could have slapped on you – and it’s certainly not the worst label that’s been slapped on you this week

I’m nodding my head slowly side to side but I still want to argue caution. Why won’t you let me be cautious? No one wants to let me be cautious. Why is that? lol

Other people’s assignation of labels is meaningless, so what? Are you a man? You’ve been labeled one. If you let that stuff constrain you then you are defined, but not self-defined. I have way too much respect for you to imply that you’re craven or submissive, but you are giving ground to a fiction by even being concerned by this.

Gads, if I were in the flattery business I could hang all sorts of definitions on you that you’d love to have and be proud of. Those are based on your writing and public actions, so they’re valid.

short version – KMA if you don’t like it. I am who I am.

One of my fears: you find out what you don’t like with that which you’ve become aligned. I don’t want to be aligned with a formal party structure because I can tell you now from the beginning that there are things about them that I don’t like.

I want to possess and act on the deeds that are emblematic of being active or an activist, but I don’t want all the attending negatives to be expected of me as well – this is one reason I don’t like labels: because they are bound to not be accurate at least some of the time. Nothing is that monolithic.

I’m finding a lot lately that the fight to stay unable to be defined gets tougher and tougher.

If you want a word that defines that part of your life, the things that you do that I call activism, what word would you choose? The fact that the (R)’s have mangled the definition of a word doesn’t change it, the left or such are activits, their people are values voters or the base or… Utter nonsense. You’re a writer – use the word that means what it means and screw the language manglers.

I don’t know – I guess maybe I’m feeling judged by people who have a different standard of activism that involves being nutty crazy and bully-like. If I’m going to see myself as an activist, it can’t have anything to do with that – well, I suppose it’s okay to be in love with that which you are pushing for. But not inaccessible to how others feel or hearing other people’s reasoning etc.

That’s when the nutty activist thing scares me off. Going so far that no one can hear you, that you can’t engage – that’s no place I want to be. Because then you are just preaching to the choir – who wants to do that? There’s no challenge there, nothing to be gained.